TagPad: easy interview software for your iPad

TagPad is new software that lets your iPad record interviews with an animated interview schedule. The iPad fits unobtrusively into your research interviews - qualitative, quantitate or mixed methods, displaying your interview questions and recording the interview. As you move between questions it dynamically tags the recorded audio by question. TagPad then automatically uploads the audio and answers from your interviews to your computer (using Dropbox) - segmenting the audio by question number. Dynamic tagging features also let you tag up your interviews for quick access and preliminary analysis.

A TagPad study starts by importing a new interview file from your DropBox. DropBox is free software that allows you to quickly get files from any computer onto your iPad. In this example we click a button to start a new study, picking a interview file from our DropBox. This file lists the questions that we will be asking in our interview (the interview schedule) in plain text.

Once we have created the new study we can start a new interview. TagPad will now record the interview, and presents you with your interview schedule. You simply hit "Next" to move the interview onto the next question. Answers to questions can be typed and those answers will be saved to your DropBox. TagPad supports both free text and structured questions.

One you have recorded an interview you can listen to the interview and easily jump to specific questions by dragging the playback position, or by clicking on that question. Hitting 'next' will quickly jump forward to the next question, allowing you to review interview audio to gain a quick overview of an interview.

TagPad supports large interview studies with many participants. Participant names are automatically annonymised and replaced by codes, to preserve study ethics.

Once interviews have been completed with one click TagPad uploads the audio from the interviews, (alongside your participant's answers) straight to your DropBox. DropBox then automatically copies those files to any of your computers, allowing you to quick access the audio files, listen to them on your computer and share them with others.

Tagpad also supports tagging interviews as you record them, or while you listen to them later. These Tags can be viewed across multiple interviews, or as you listen to a single interview. Tags can easily be created and deleted with a rapid interface designed for quickly picking and searching tags.